


Love calls you by your name

by lapoesieestdanslarue



Category: Inception (2010), Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Tommy just wants Eames and Eames just wants Tommy to be safe, and i just want to go to college but hey we can't always get what we want !, this is what a bad life decision looks like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 02:24:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13537698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lapoesieestdanslarue/pseuds/lapoesieestdanslarue
Summary: “Real or not real?” Eames’ voice is quiet, not wanting to disturb the sanctuary they’ve built for themselves.Tommy looks up at him, sad smile on his face.“Not real, love,” he answers softly.





	Love calls you by your name

**Author's Note:**

  * For [apolliades](https://archiveofourown.org/users/apolliades/gifts).



> I literally have an irish exam in ten hours but I wrote this instead of studying because that's the kind of person I've become

Eames is drowning in the soft sunlight dripping from the windows, half-shrouded in curtain, drowning under the impossibly soft blankets, drowning in the kiss and touch of Tommy Shelby.

Tommy’s head is cushioned between his bicep and his chest, fitting just right as if the juncture was made for him and him alone. His right arm is splayed across Eames’ torso, his fingers dancing gently in the mid-morning sunbeams, twining around the dust particles that surround them. 

He doesn’t want to ask. He hates the heavy way the question lies on his tongue, and he hates to bear the kick. 

“Real or not real?” Eames’ voice is quiet, not wanting to disturb the sanctuary they’ve built for themselves.

Tommy looks up at him, sad smile on his face.

“Not real, love,” he answers softly, hand darting out to caress Eames’ face once more- And it’s all he has in his power to pull away because that’s so uniquely _Tommy_ it nearly has Eames weeping. That’s sacred, is the thing. That’s reserved for weekends at home and Sunday mornings when neither of them want to leave the bed because leaving means _leaving,_ for longer than the time it takes to make a cup of tea, leaving for undisclosed periods of time and not having the certainty that they’ll see each other again.

Sighing, Eames reaches for the gun on the bedside locker, pulls the trigger and shoots himself in the head.

~*~

Dreams like that are the very worst of them, Eames decides upon waking up. 

It’s the shock, the jump, the nausea that hits him like a tsunami when he remembers Tommy. 

Beautiful, vital Tommy, who’s as beautiful and terrifying in a dreamscape as he is in the real world- even more so, if possible. Dreamscape Tommy is a pipe dream, a figment of Eames’ imagination designed to taunt. 

Dreamscape Tommy is soft, sunny, warm and sweet as honey. All the parts of him Eames adores impossibly but is so rarely allowed to see. Being with Tommy in a dream has the distinct feeling of falling in love for the first time and the bitter aftertaste of sorrow when Eames wakes up alone with his boy halfway across the world. 

~*~

Many, many miles away, in a pub in Small Heath, Birmingham the real Tommy Shelby is smoking his seventh cigarette of the night and trying to ignore the voice in the back of his head that sounds annoyingly like Eames telling him that he’s walking himself to death. 

“I’m locking up now, alright Tom?” Arthur asks, swinging the keys around his hand. 

“That’s grand, Arthur,” he answers, pouring himself another glass of whiskey. 

He can hear Arthur hesitate behind the bar, looking from the nearly empty packet of Marlboro’s to the half-drunk bottle of whiskey. “You heading out soon?”

“Soon, Arthur, yeah.”

“Take care, Tom.”

“I always do.”

He can’t help the grin that tugs at his lips when Arthur mutters “Barely” and shuts the door behind him. 

Two minutes later, like clockwork, Tommy’s phone rings.

“Why are you answering? Isn’t it in the middle of the night for you?”

He closes his eyes and tries not to let the sigh of relief he lets out echo to loudly down the phone.

“It’s nearly eleven, Eames.”

“Oh.” The shock in his voice is almost funny. Wherever he is he must have completely lost grip of time. Then again, Tommy reckons, when you’re in a drug-induced sleep half the time real life must slip through your fingers like sand. “Pour us and drink then, darling, and give us a toast.”

“May you never go to hell,” Tommy says, remembering his father’s words as the honey brown liquor pours effortlessly into the glass. “But always be on your way.” He throws it back, gulping and hissing at the slight burn in his throat.

“Good?” Eames asks.

“Mmm.”

“Real or not real?” It’s tumbling down the other end of the line to him before he can catch a break.

Tommy goes quiet. He closes his eyes and tries not to let the edge of desperation in Eames’ voice get to him. “Real, Eames. This is real.”

“I’m sorry, I just-”

“It’s okay, I - I would, too.”

It’s silent between them, and then-

“I miss you.”

“I know.” And he does, really. Tommy wishes, more than anything that he could do… _Something._ He doesn’t do this, doesn’t really use words. If he were actually there, with Eames he could kiss him, touch him, use his hands and lips to calm and subdue him.

“I’ll be home soon.”

Tommy smiles this time. “I know.”

“Are you smiling, Tommy Shelby?” Eames already sounds better, Tommy hesitates to say ‘happier’ but it seems that way and God knows Tommy doesn’t want that to go away any time soon. 

He doesn’t bother to lie. “I am, Eames.”

“You’re not usually this open.”

“Well, distance makes the heart grow fonder and all that.” 

“How many whiskeys have you had?” The other man asks. 

“I lost count,” Tommy admits.

“You’re drunk.”

“I miss you.”

Eames is definitely smiling now. “I know.”

~*~

“Don’t go,” Tommy says from the bed. “Do you have to go?”

Eames sighs. “Cobb wants this job done by the end of the month. Client’s getting fussy.”

Tommy reaches out, his hand stretching across the bedsheets and running his fingers down the columns of Eames’ spine. “Where are you going?”

The corners of his mouth downturn, and he twists back. Taking Tommy’s hand in his, he lifts it up and presses a kiss to the palm of it, reverent. “You know I can’t tell you,” he says, quiet and morose. 

“When will you be back?”

Eames shuts his eyes, swallowing down the bitterness that lodges at the back of his throat.

“You know I can’t tell you that either,” he whispers, leaning down to kiss the shadow that falls underneath the fan of Tommy’s lashes. “I’m sorry.”

“I know.” Tommy shifts, sitting up in the bed. He presses a peck to Eames’ collarbone, and then again, to the underside of his jaw. “I never got to bring you to that fundraiser.”

Eames smiles, despite himself, resting his cheek against the top of Tommy’s head, breathing in the familiar scent of his fluffy, bed-wrecked hair. “You hate fundraisers.”

He looks up at Eames, serene. “Maybe they would be more bearable with you, though.”

“Me and a bottle of whiskey?”

Tommy chuckles, a happy and light sound in the mid-morning heaven. “Exactly.” They lapse into silence again, breathing each other in, before Tommy breaks it after a while. “Will you do me a favour?” He asks, low and unsure. 

Eames answers in a heartbeat, without having to think twice. “Anything.”

Sitting up straight again, he traces the arch of Eames lip with his thumb. “Will you give me a dance, anyways?” He kisses him, then, soft and painfully sweet.

“There’s no music,” Eames mumbles against his mouth.

“Yes there is,” Tommy mutters, his voice deep and rough and resounding against their bedroom like the smoke he inhales. He’s smiling, happy and delirious and christ, Eames is so in love with him it hurts. He begins to hum something, halfhearted and horrendously off key but it’s still one of the most beautiful things Eames has ever heard.

“Dream a little dream of me,” Tommy croons, fingers sifting through the soft hair at the nape of Eames’ neck, Eames pressed against his neck, lips at his pulse, the two of them swaying gently as world outside them begins to stir.

“They’re all of you, darling,” he whispers.

Tommy curls around. “Please just stay.”

Letting out a quaking breath, Eames asks “Real or not real?”

“It doesn’t matter, Eames.”

With a final kiss to his jugular, he pulls back, and firmer says “Real or not real?”

Seeing the resolve in his eyes, Tommy relents. “Not real, love.”

He shuts his eyes against the tears that come like the tide. “ _Tommy.”_

“Eames, love, don’t, you can stay, _stay-”_

The bullet is in his brain before Tommy can get the rest of the words out.

~*~

The wet damp of Birmingham fog greets him like an old friend, and Eames doesn't even bother with the Garrison. Once his foot is on the pavement he starts on his ways to Tommy’s flat, nearly running by the time he reaches the red-brick building. 

He punches in the code Tommy swore he’d never tell him (but did did eventually indulge one night before Eames left) and lets himself in, taking the stairs two at a time, too impatient for the elevator. Eames needs, desperately, and in a way that’s a bit foreign to him, to _touch_ Tommy, feel him, know that he’s real and safe and here.

When he knocks on the door, and Tommy’s voice, rough and desolate answers “S’open”, Eames’ heart drops to the pit of his stomach. Slowly, he pushes the door open, and lets out a low oath when he sees the state of Tommy. 

Shirt off, his ribs are purple and blue and his knuckles are covered in blood. But his face, his perfect, handsome face, is gone. It’s been beaten and battered into oblivion, a gash on the side of Tommy’s head staining the rest of his right side bright crimson. His lips, usually the softest part of him, are swollen and bloody. His eyes, the bright baby blues are framed by black bruises.

Eames could cry. Eames could scream. Eames could cut him from the naves to his chaps and then stitch him back up, the stupid, _stupid_ boy.

“Thought you were Ada,” the man slurs from his place on the couch.

“No,” he replies, tense. It feels like his jaw might snap in two. “Didn’t get so lucky.”

Tommy sighs. “Don’t make a fuss, Eames.”

“A fuss?” He asks, incredulous. “I come home after _months_ to see you with a fucking split head and beaten seven ways to Sunday and you don’t want me to make a _fuss_?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I want you to do,” he snaps back. 

“That’s not _fucking_ happening!” Eames roars. “If you think I’m going to watch fucking bleed to death on that shitty couch you’ve another thing coming.” He storms over, grabbing the gauze on the shelf. “How the fuck did this even happen?”

“Business.”

Eames laughs once, short and bitter. “Business. Always fucking business. You’re walking yourself into an early fucking grave and you don’t even care.”

“As if you’re any better,” Tommy shoots back. 

Eames grings his jaw. “That’s different.”

“Don’t give me that bullshit, Eames. You might be quiet but I hear things from people in your neck of the words. You think this is bad? At least I’m not shooting myself in the fucking head to wake up.”

“ _Don’t.”_

Eames is clutching the gauze tight as rosary beads, head bent. His breaths are coming in short, shuddering bursts. Not taking the care to hide his distress, he asks “Real or not real?” 

It sounds like a plea, it sounds like a prayer. 

Tommy sighs. “Real. I’m sorry. Real.”

“Why the fuck’d you do this, Tom?”

Gently, testing the waters, he lays a hand atop Eames’ head, running his fingers through the light strands of brown hair. “It really was business.”

“Bad business.”

“Business is bad by nature.” Tommy leans down, resting his head against Eames’. “How am I supposed to compete, hm? How am I supposed to compete with the me that loves in your head?”

Eames creeks open an eye. “Is this what this is about?”

“The Russians were talking. One of them said that when women had lost husbands they were using somacin to see them again.” He strokes Eames’ cheek. “Apparently they’re almost better than real life. Apparently once you taste a dream, reality is never enough, never as filling.”

Eames shakes his head, pressing a kiss to Tommy’s lesser bruised cheek. “You’re better than anything a dream could come up with.”

“How?” He asks, almost frenzied in his desperation. “How the fuck, Eames?”

“You’re real,” he answers, and with a kiss to his bloodstained lips, seals his fate. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments greatly appreciated!


End file.
